# Check color contrast on your Mac, WCAG 2 and APCA

To find out whether gray text is readable on its background, pick both colors from the screen with SupaPick, then choose **Contrast…** in its menu. A small panel shows the WCAG 2 ratio, the APCA lightness contrast and a pass or fail for each WCAG level, next to an “Aa” preview of the pair. No web page, no typing HEX codes into two boxes.

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macOS 14 or later · [Signed and notarized by Apple](https://supatools.app/security) · Free for 7 days · 14-day refund

## How to do it with SupaPick

1. Press `⌃⌥C` and click the background. Press it again and click the text.
2. Click the eyedropper in the menu bar and choose **Contrast…**. Your latest pick is the text color and the one before it is the background.
3. Read the ratio, such as 4.54:1, the APCA value, such as Lc 63.1, and the AA, AA Large, AAA and AAA Large badges.
4. Change either color from the pop-up menus, which list your recent picks, or click the arrows to swap text and background.

## With what's built into macOS

macOS itself has no contrast checker. If you have Xcode, its Accessibility Inspector has one: Window → Show Color Contrast Calculator. It is built for checking app interfaces and lives inside a developer tool you open separately, and it gives a WCAG-style ratio but not APCA.

Web checkers do the math well, but you first have to get two HEX values off the screen and type them in.

SupaPick keeps the picking and the checking in one place. The panel works on the colors you just picked, updates when you pick another, and stays open while you click elsewhere. Close it with `Esc` or its close button. APCA's sign tells you the polarity: positive for dark text on a light background, negative for light text on dark.

## Questions and answers

**Which thresholds does it use?**

WCAG 2: AA needs 4.5:1, AA Large 3:1, AAA 7:1 and AAA Large 4.5:1. APCA is shown as an Lc value for you to judge against the guidance for your text size; it has no pass or fail badge.

**Can I type in a color instead of picking it?**

Not in 1.0. Both colors come from your history of picks. To check a color you only have as a code, show it on screen, for example in a browser, and pick it.

**Is SupaPick free?**

Partly. Everything is unlocked for 7 days, no account needed. After that the loupe, HEX copy and HEX history stay free for good. Every other format, palettes with export and the contrast panel need a license key, which is $4.99 once for three Macs.

## Related

- [Color Picker for Mac: Any Pixel, Copied as Code](https://supapick.app/color-picker-mac)
- [Pick a Color From Your Screen on Mac in One Click](https://supapick.app/pick-color-from-screen-mac)
- [HEX Color Picker for Mac: Copy #RRGGBB From Any Pixel](https://supapick.app/hex-color-picker-mac)
- [SupaPick alternatives](https://supapick.app/alternatives)
- [More about SupaPick](https://supapick.app/)